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At the time the Treaties were drafted, financial stability and the potential differences between financial and business cycles were not a primary consideration. The Treaty provisions do not point towards a clear, unambiguous role for the ECB. Certain economic approaches may now suggest different ways of coping with financial stability challenges that, on some occasions, would involve a wider role for central banks. But the ECB, as an institution bound by the rule of law, has to operate within the limits set by the Treaties.
Article 127(5) of the Treaty implies that the ECB has only a contributory and supporting role with regard to financial stability. This role is partly discharged through its advisory role in the preparation of EU or national acts.
Beyond that, the ECB’s financial stability role is embedded within the ECB’s basic monetary policy task and the ECB’s microprudential supervisory tasks. The specific macroprudential tasks contained in the SSM Regulation are supplementary in nature, and do not confer any general competence on the ECB in the field of macroprudential policy.
These are primarily legal conclusions that also reflect the relative positions of public institutions in terms of independence and accountability. Beyond these considerations, however, there are political and economic considerations that have not been addressed here.